Monday, September 12, 2016

EMAILGATE: What Hillary Tells Voters Isn't What She Told The FBI

Journalism: No wonder the mainstream press is outraged at Matt Lauer's performance as moderator of NBC's "Commander in chief Forum." He asked questions about Hillary Clinton's email use that the rest of the media refuse to. And in doing so, Lauer exposed another aspect of her duplicitousness.

When Lauer asked Clinton about her judgment when it came to using an unsecured private email server to handle highly sensitive State Department communications, Clinton was emphatic that she was well versed in how to handle classified material.

"For all the viewers watching tonight, I have a lot of experience handling classified material starting when I was on the Senate Armed Services Committee going into the four years as secretary of state," she said.

"Classified material has a header that says Top Secret, Secret or Confidential. And nothing — and I will repeat this — none of the emails sent or received by me had such a header."

Lauer has been blasted by his colleagues for not hitting Donald Trump with tough follow-up questions and letting him get away with making false statements. But if he is to be criticized for anything, it's that he clearly let Clinton off the hook on this one.

Since her first news conference on the topic in March 2015, Clinton has claimed there was no classified material on her server. When classified information started turning up in abundance in her email chains, she modified her claim to say that none of the emails was marked classified. It's a claim she has made ever since.

Boy I'm glad that's over with. Pour me another one.

But just because Clinton keeps saying something doesn't make it true. And in this case, what she's saying is intentionally misleading.

FBI Director James Comey made it clear that more than 100 emails that Clinton sent or received contained classified information "at the time they were sent or received." Eight contained Top Secret information.